We must edit this phrase to “accompany us on our journey.” “Pray for us sinners”: Here is an example of language that many of us modern people would regard as triumphalist! We are dismissed as mere “sinners,” and Mary is condescendingly praying for us.“Holy Mary, Mother of God”: We must stop offending Protestants with the hackneyed phrase “Mother of God.” While we’re at it, as we have already changed “blessed” to “happy,” so we can easily change “holy” to “lucky,” which is much more in keeping, after all, with modern sensibilities.

“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”: How can language be this archaic? We must not overuse “happy,” so we will change this into “Super is your child, Jesus.” Remember the 1970 rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar”? Back to the future!.

And “women,” as we have already pointed out, is too restrictive, so we will modify this, once again, to “us.” Naturally, the “art thou” will be dropped.

“Blessed art thou among women.” The “blessed” should be modernized to “happy,” something that “Today’s English Version” has already been doing for a few decades with the awkward “blessed” in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5).

“The Lord is with thee”: Many parishes have dropped the “thee” business, replacing it with the contemporary “you.” We should finish the job here by teaching that the Lord is nonjudgmentally with all of us on our faith journeys, so we must change this to read that “The Lord is with us.”.

(The word “lady” is out of fashion, and we don’t want to say “woman” because it’s not inclusive enough.) It’s time, though, to modernize this whole business by pointing out that we should refer to Mary as a very nice person.

“Full of grace”: The New American Bible already gives this as “favored one,” and the Good News Bible (“Today’s English Version”) was even trendier in using the phrase “The Lord … has greatly blessed you” (Lk 1:28).

This must be updated to a greeting such as “hi” or, even better, “hey.” An angel today would say, “Hey, Mary.” Right?

“Hail, Mary”: Nobody says “hail” anymore.

Isn’t it time to update the “Hail, Mary”? Although there have been a number of attempts to change this beautiful Marian prayer to make it more contemporary, the time may now have come for a full-scale modernization. Pope Francis wants to change the wording of the “Our Father” or “Pater Noster.” I wonder, though, why he should stop there.

How to say hail mary in latin